Posted on 01/06/2009 11:52:26 AM PST by BGHater
President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.
Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.
When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment.
The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting in November with Obama, who said that Gupta could be the highest-profile surgeon general in history and would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice, the sources said. Gupta later spoke with Tom Daschle, Obama's White House health czar and nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, and other advisers to the president-elect.
The Michigan-born son of Indian and Pakistani parents, Gupta has always been drawn to health policy. He was a White House fellow in the late 1990s, writing speeches and crafting policy for Hillary Clinton. His appointment would give the administration a prominent official of Southwest Asian descent and a skilled television spokesman.
Gupta, who hosts "House Call" on CNN, has discussed the job offer with his bosses at CBS and CNN to make sure he could be released from his contractual obligations, the sources said.
His role as journalist and physician have sometimes overlapped. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, Gupta was embedded with a Navy unit called Devil Docs and, while covering its mission, performed brain surgery five times, the first of which was on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
I'm with you on this one. We are not like the shrill liberals who hated everything Bush did. Lets preserve our credibility by only criticizing things that warrant our concern.
I guess this is because Dr. Seuss is already dead.
Amen. There is plenty of room for legitimate ridicule of some of Bambi’s picks. This isn’t one of those times.
You can’t emphasize that enough, compared to a three-alarm flake like the Clinton’s Jocelyn Elders, a “real” doctor who’s seen a good deal of the real word sounds just peachy.
It’s also important to note that he’s a brain surgeon not another pediatrician like Elders or pediatrician/lawyer like David Kessler (Clinton’s FDA appointee) I wot pediatricians must be the ed students of the medical profession.
Much as I dislike Bam, this guy (Sanjay Gupta) is actually a MD.
So was she....
A good pick, IMHO.
This is actually a fairly good pick, in my opinion. Dr. Gupta is more than qualified for the SG position. The fact that he’s a correspondent for CNN is trivial, really.
If he’s such a great doctor, what’s he doing on TV?
He may be a good doctor, but he doesn’t appear to be that much involved in public health, outside of the TV aspect.
Aren’t there other candidates out there?
Prefereably, a “nobody” on TV who has creds among his peers.
Actually, the Surgeon General is quite an important position and does far more than most people realize.
That's fine. It's the most pointless job in America.
When I'm elected, I'm giving the job to a cactus.
How is he going to beat Jocelyn Elders?
Remember he did take a bit of flak for daring to take on (at least in part) Lumpy Riefenstahl (Moore) when “Sicko” came out.
Medical Marvin seen here, talks about how to do your own home colonoscopy.....
Any direct connection to Clinton pal InfoUSA Vin Gupta?
Considering how invasive a database Communized medicine wants to be, it’s a question worth asking now.
I am about to smack my knuckles with the scale ruler on my desk for typing this, but I actually think this is a good choice.
OMG! Am I saying I agree with something 0bama did?
AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Bring back Captain Crunch!
his interview with Michael Moore about Sicko and the way he let Moore get away with praising Cuba’s health care system while focusing on some very narrow cost issue took away any credibility he had with me.
“OMG! Am I saying I agree with something 0bama did?”
I would hope that’s the difference between FReepers and the loons over at DK.... we don’t suffer from ODS like they suffer from BDS.
"Jesus Vidana was still alive, but dying, in the middle of an FRSS just outside Baghdad when a team of heroic doctors and nurses descended on him. Quickly, a breathing tube was placed in him, and he was given back some of the precious blood that was now soaking the sand where he had been shot.
As a neurosurgeon, I was asked to step back from my journalist's role to look at his gunshot wound to the head. Shortly thereafter, I was removing a bullet from his brain. Within an hour, Jesus had been treated, operated on and was recovering just outside the operating room.
In all the years I have worked in hospitals, I have never seen resources mobilized so quickly and health care workers move with such purpose. And, remember, it was a tent in the middle of the desert by the dark of night in the most dangerous place on Earth.
I wouldn't be telling you this story if Jesus hadn't survived and done well.
He is a handsome young man who is considering a career in physical therapy and still trying to reconcile his brush with death. I visited him last year in Southern California and his mother slowly walked over to me and took my hands and said simply, "Thank you."
I still remember looking over at my producer Stephanie Smith and watching her begin to cry, which of course made me cry as well. This story, though, is more than a story about one Marine who lived, when so many thought he would die. It is about the remarkable technology and brilliant thinking that has brought the wounded of this war to doctors and nurses faster than ever before. This is a story about brave men and women who risk their lives every day so they might save others."
I’ve seen this person on CNN. Seems like a smart, fair guy.
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